“In this photo, I’m holding a snake known in Italy as a cervone (Elaphe quatuorlineata). It’s one of 189 that we’ve inspected so far in 2024 in Cocullo, a small town in the Abruzzo region of central Italy.
In Cocullo, snakes feature in a spring ritual that dates back at least 2,000 years. At the start of April, snake catchers (known as serpari) capture dozens of snakes in preparation for what’s become Christianized as the procession of St Dominic of Sora. A statue of the saint — who lived in the region and, according to legend, cured many people from snake bites — is then adorned with live snakes and carried through the streets of Cocullo.
A project to monitor the health and growth of the snakes has been in place for more than 15 years. I work with Gianpaolo Montinaro, who conceived the project in 2007, to supervise the monitoring on behalf of Italy’s environment ministry. My team, which includes two veterinarians at the University of Bari, acquires biological data and samples and places a microchip in each snake so that it can identified in future. At the end of the ritual, the snakes are released at the exact spot where they were captured.
The information collected contributes to scientific publications and strategies on snake conservation — and, from this year, to a project at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior to study animals’ responses to natural disasters. We’d never have been able to collect data on snake populations for so long had it not been for the Cocullo festival. Since 2010, we’ve gathered data on more than 1,500 snakes. This is a genuine example of citizen science, and is all the more impressive given that snakes are widely feared.
Outside the snake-festival season, I deal with invasive exotic species, biodiversity-protection policies and endangered species.”
Source: Ecology - nature.com
